People who like their comedy surreal will enjoy this more than others. There seemed to be a cultural comedy barrier between these Norwegians and the largely British audience at GHQ, which prevented the show from going as well as it may do elsewhere.
It began with the three young Norwegian men shouting things at us from behind a screen. After introducing themselves, Lars and Adam T then started arguing about the pronunciation of Epsom salt, conveniently leaving the stage free for Martin Beyer-Olsen to start his set. It came across as a little contrived, setting the tone for the rest of the show.
Our first Norwegian comic, Martin Beyer-Olsen, was accompanied by a harmonica and performed an energetic impression of a girl playing video games. However, unfortunately he lost confidence and gave up early on in the set. Many of his jokes had no recognisable punch-line but his material did have potential and it was unnecessarily let down by him saying things like ‘Wow, that gets a bigger laugh back at home’ or ‘This is a really disgusting joke but I’m going to tell it anyway’, with a lost, apologetic smile on his face.
Lars Berrum’s act was the most popular. Lars’ accent is both endearing and hilarious. His spiel about how ‘sexy’ and ‘cool’ he is was a very big hit, as were his stories of working as a particularly irresponsible male nurse. He rounded the whole thing off with a spectacular finale which I will not give away here.
Finally, Adam T entertained us with adventures from his trip to the Bronx, interweaving various hip-hop lyrics into the narrative and flaunting some impressive New York accents. Unfortunately, his complaints about people with special dietary requirements fell flat. Nobody knew quite how to react to them, or to the spontaneous outbreak of amateur beat-boxing to a song entitled ‘What’s Up With That?’, written or perhaps improvised by Adam himself.
At some point in the show, everyone in the audience was totally bemused by proceedings. Some erupted with laughter, but many hung their hands in embarrassment. The absurdity went too far and the admittedly original mixture of ordinary observational comedy and bizarre songs, sketches, and instances of nudity was ultimately unsuccessful.
